Saturday, June 17, 2006

Ha Fucking Ha, Kids

On my way to work Thursday morning I noticed that lamest of bored schoolkid pranks had befallen the beautiful and historic Skidmore Fountain in Portland. It anchors Ankeny Square, and is, as the Parks blurb notes, one of the rare treasures of American artistic water features. [By the way, click the "see more photos" link for a host of really great antique shots of downtown Portland.] It's also in a quiet little piazza of town at night, as those with no place to go and no room in the shelters drift off to bridges, grates and other warm, semi-safe places.

Sometime during the night, apparently it became worth the $12 bucks or so in liquid Tide (they left the bottles in a bag at the foot of the fountain) to turn the fountain into a municipal laundry. The movement of the water naturally churns up extra froth, so you get a curtain of white across the surface of the water. It's actually not as bad with liquid as in the days when I might have been the bored kid (although I never personally did anything like that, I contemplated it more than once, and had a close friend who had). Powders, and I think phosphate powders specificially, would make tremendous frothy bubbles ala the washer explosion scene on the Brady Bunch.

I must be getting old, because I saw it and thought, "Awwww...MAN!" It took so long to restore it, and lately it's been running clear as a bell, making me think of it running in earlier times, as above. I felt cheated of the daily experience of walking past it and reading the words B!x revived at Portland Communique: Good Citizens are the Riches of a City. It's the only fountain I've ever had a special interest in, and now it was tempting people who hadn't gotten the chance to wash out clothes in a while.

Cementing my status as a complete buzzkill, I tracked down Water Bureau spokesperson Tricia Knolls, and asked her how that gets fixed, and how much it costs us. To my surprise, Ms. Knolls was pretty nonchalant. She said they have materials that can treat it, depending on the size of the fountain and the damage. For the Skidmore, she said, the water involved is so relatively small that workers would simply replace it. I asked what that ends up costing the City, ballpark--couple hundred bucks? "Oh no, less than that," she said. It doesn't happen all that often, actually, although with warmer weather of course they draw more attention. "But we don't like to advertise that, for obvious reasons." Whoops.

OK, so I feel better knowing it's an occassional divergence from a City that must endure the pros and cons of being weird (or trying to be), and that it doesn't take much out of pocket to fix. But I'm telling you people, leave my fountain alone.